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I have recently come across this festival and it sounds amazing. Last year saw the re-kindling of the oldest recorded festival in Europe – The Festival of the Fires on the ancient Hill of Uisneach.

The news that the 1901 census has been released online will come as good news to some of Ireland’s huge diaspora – considered to be somewhere in the region of about 80 million – more than 14 times the size of our population. However it will also come in handy for members of this site who may be trying to track down the history of their cottage.

New Cottageology Logo I hope you all like the new logo and banner for Cottageology! It was time the blog got a little bit of a spring clean…

I was delighted recently to obtain a copy of the fantastic box set ‘Hands’. It is one series that I have been talking about for years and was always on the look out for. If anyone hasn’t seen this series on RTÉ then you are in for a treat. It is a collection of 37 documentaries produced by Sally and David Shaw-Smith for RTÉ – “A series of fascinating documentaries on traditional Irish crafts and lifestyles, where the emphasis is on the skills of human hands rather than on machines”.

Discovering the age of your cottage is much like trying to uncover your family tree, the further you go back the more difficult it becomes. As a general rule, cottages are an architectural style all of their own, transcending the years and fashions. The style is rarely indicative of its age, a larger style cottage may be deceptive as it could have started out as a two bedroomed cottage and have been extend over the years as the inhabitants became more affluent to become a thatched mansion. Conversely, that run down turf shed or ruin on your land could be a cottage hundreds of years old who’s owners fell on hard times. The following are some of the best ways of tracing the age of your property:

The aim for this website is to provide a central location for information about Irish cottages from renovation and maintenance to history, living stories and lifestyles – all cottage related topics are open for discussion!